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Clinically Reviewed by Dr. Matin Hemmat LPCC, CADC. If you love someone and they are in trouble, it is human nature (for good people) to want to help. Actually, you don’t even have to love someone to want to help. If you see someone stuck in quicksand, a reasonable person will try to pull them out. The problem is when addiction is involved. There are so many problems and so many needs it can sometimes be hard to know when you are helping and when you are enabling addiction. The way to look at it is this: addiction has consequences. Those might be legal, financial, professional (or school-related). It’s not hard to list them out. Maybe getting a DUI, fired from a job, or owing everyone money. What Is Enabling Addiction? Put plainly, enabling addiction is any behavior—often driven by kindness and compassion—that helps a loved one escape the consequences of their behavior. And once you do it, like a stray cat that got a leftover can of tuna, your loved one knows just where to go to get the help they need to keep their addiction going strong. Enabling prevents your loved one from encountering the critical consequences needed to recognize harmful behaviors and initiate change. It keeps the fires of addiction stoked and burning strong. Helping vs. Enabling Let’s look again at the quicksand analogy. If you want to help someone stuck in quicksand, give them a rope. You identify tools that can help them find a way out of the dire circumstances they find themselves in. On the other hand, you could jump in with them. Get mired in their issue, and let them grab onto your back as you pull everyone out. And you both go down together. Helping helps … Helping a person with an addiction respects the other’s autonomy. It is anything that offers a clear path toward healthier choices. Real support for a person with a substance use disorder maintains boundaries that protect everyone involved. Enabling soothes … The act of enabling is an act of soothing discomfort. And while it might help a person feel good temporarily, it erodes personal responsibility. This is another crazy vicious cycle for a person with an addiction because now they have something else in their life reinforcing the addiction.  Enabling rewards negative patterns rather than encouraging adaptive changes. What Does Enabling Addiction Look Like? Spotting enabling behaviors isn’t always straightforward. It wears kindness as camouflage, so let’s illuminate it: Why Enabling Causes Issues Enabling addiction builds the addiction. Addiction looks for anything relatively within reach to help it get to its all-consuming goal: getting high. When you give your loved one money to pay off their dealer, when you give them rides after their DUI, when you give them a rent-free place to live after they lose their job, you are inadvertently giving them a bridge back to their fix. It interrupts the natural progression of life where you fall and learn how to walk better because of it. There are even times when a ride in a cop car, even a couple of days in jail, can be the necessary wake-up. Compassion Without the Cushioning If you want to offer support, real support that does not enable addiction, it is important to hold compassion and accountability side by side. It’s like baking bread—you need warmth and softness, yes, but also a sturdy pan for structure. Genuine support can involve listening without rescuing, empathizing without excusing, and reminding them of their strength to seek help themselves. Sometimes, the most loving response is, “I love you deeply, but I won’t protect you from the consequences of your choices.” It comes down to healthy boundaries. Boundaries: The Art of Loving Limits Setting boundaries might feel harsh at first, like refusing to let a toddler touch a hot stove. It’s tough love, grounded deeply in care. Consider boundaries as clear, compassionate lines in the sand. You might say: Healthy boundaries help establish incentives for the brain to adapt to new behaviors. They communicate confidence, clarity, and compassion, providing a stable foundation rather than shifting sand. When It’s Time to Reach Out Enabling addiction might seem like kindness, but kindness without truth is incomplete. If your loved one needs help, guidance is available. Our outpatient services are often the perfect blend of structure and flexibility for individuals to find lasting recovery. Peninsula Health Center in the South Bay area has addiction specialists who understand deeply, scientifically, and compassionately how change unfolds. Reach out and talk with us. It may feel like a small step, but meaningful recovery often starts quietly in moments just like this. Call Peninsula today: 866-934-8228.

Clinically Reviewed by Dr. Matin Hemmat LPCC, CADC. Addiction is the great equalizer. Just like any natural disaster that comes your way, it does not care if you are rich or poor, brilliant or struggling, wild and carefree or profoundly lonely. It does not care if you’ve made promises to yourself never to be like your uncle or if you were raised in a home where no one even said the word “addiction” out loud. Addiction can come to any household, but what people often wonder is what causes addiction. The answer is pretty complex, but addiction typically gets in through a combination of three main doors: genetics, environment, and brain chemistry. And it changes you. Not in a way that means you are ruined, but in a way that means you will have to work to get back to yourself. What Causes Addiction: The Early Signs When addiction arrives, it is not exactly a new face. Most likely, there is a history that may have started small, but eventually, the presence of drugs or alcohol in your life is as common as putting on shoes. But the disease of addiction does arrive quietly. It happens in the small rewiring of the brain’s reward system. Maybe it’s the second glass of wine that turns into three, the pain pills you take even after the injury heals, or the heroin habit that started out as just something to try. But then: By the time addiction is full-blown, the brain has changed. The pathways that were once about real and natural rewards—about laughing with friends, about taking a hike on a warm spring day, about music that makes you feel something deep in your bones—are now hijacked. The substance now has the authority over what makes you feel good. This is a big part of what causes addiction. What Makes Someone More Likely to Become Addicted? It is not just about willpower. If it were, we’d all just decide to be better, and addiction wouldn’t exist. The reality is more complicated. Let’s get back to those three doorways to addiction. Generally speaking, there is not a single thing we can point to that causes addiction. However, three things in your life (in everybody’s life) will contribute. Does Genetics Determine Addiction? Not entirely, but they do make a difference. If you have a family history of addiction, your risk goes up. Scientists estimate that about 40-60% of addiction risk is genetic. But genetics are not a prophecy that can’t be changed. They’re more like a road map. There are many options, and you can always choose a different route. Does Environment Cause Addiction? It doesn’t guarantee it, but it absolutely influences it. A person growing up in an environment where their best friend down the street and their parents make regular use of drugs affects things. But that’s the obvious one. It also matters when emotional pain goes unacknowledged or where stress is constant—people living in these situations are more likely to turn to substances as a coping mechanism. And once the brain learns that substances work—that they offer relief, even briefly—it will remember. How Does Mental Health Impact Addiction? The brain does not separate mental health from addiction. They are tangled up together like Christmas lights stuffed in a box and left in the attic for a decade. If you are living with untreated anxiety, depression, PTSD, or even chronic stress, your brain is already working overtime just to function. Substances become a shortcut to peace. For people with mental health issues, drugs are a way to quiet the noise, even if it is only for a moment. The problem is that they make everything worse in the long run. Is Addiction a Disease or a Choice? This is where people tend to get stuck. They want something or someone to blame. They want it to be a moral failure. Or they want to remain a victim of a disease. It to be one or the other. But addiction exists in the messy, complicated middle. It starts as a choice—no one is forced to take the first drink or the first pill. But once addiction takes hold, it is no longer just a matter of willpower. The brain is rewired, and stopping is no longer as simple as deciding to stop. It is like telling someone with a broken leg to just “walk it off.” What causes addiction? Both a choice and a chilling disease. Does Your Treatment Need to Address All Three Factors? Yes. One hundred percent. If treatment only focuses on stopping substance use, it fails. If it only focuses on past trauma, it fails. If it ignores mental health, it fails. Real recovery—the kind that lasts—means addressing all three: Getting Help with the Causes of Addiction in the South Bay Area Addiction is not a moral failing. It is not a character flaw. It is a brain issue, a coping mechanism, a tangled mess of biology, experience, and pain. And most importantly—it is treatable. No one has to do this alone. Real help exists. You are not beyond repair. Peninsula Health Center in the South Bay area provides compassionate, evidence-based addiction treatment tailored to each individual’s needs. Through a combination of medical support, therapy, and holistic care, we help people break free from addiction and build a healthier, more fulfilling life. Call. Ask questions. Get help. The road back to yourself is possible. Call today: 866-934-8228.

Clinically Reviewed by Dr. Matin Hemmat LPCC, CADC. There’s a lot of bad news in the world, and if you’ve landed here, you might be in the midst of some of it. Or maybe someone you love has been talking about some subjects that feel dangerous—feel like there is more than an interest on their part. Mixing fentanyl with cocaine—whether by design or by accident—is one of the most hazardous chemical mash-ups in modern drug use. And yet, people do it. Dealers mix it. The body reacts. And sometimes, the heart simply stops. Mixing Fentanyl with Cocaine: Speedballing This is where history matters. “Speedballing” has been around for a long time; the term originally described the cocktail of heroin (a sedative) and cocaine (a stimulant), made famous by the likes of John Belushi and River Phoenix. The idea was that one drug would take the edge off the other—cocaine brings the rush, heroin smooths out the crash. The problem is that, in reality, the body doesn’t experience balance. When mixing fentanyl with cocaine, your body experiences chaos. It’s everywhere … These days, fentanyl has become one of the most accessible and universal drugs. It has even taken heroin’s place in this equation. Except fentanyl is not just another opioid. It is exponentially stronger, unpredictable in its power, and capable of taking a person’s life before they even know they’ve taken it. So, when fentanyl sneaks into cocaine, the risks and the stakes skyrocket. Is It Dangerous to Mix Fentanyl with Coke? One of the issues you will always hear is that drugs are not regulated. There is no way of knowing doses, types, purity levels—anything—with any sort of consistent reality. So just because you have taken it once without any “problems” doesn’t mean you are fine to go again. Add to that, with fentanyl, there is no built-in warning system. No slow progression into overdose. The stimulant effect of cocaine can temporarily mask the sedation of fentanyl, which means a person may not feel how close they are to respiratory failure—until they stop breathing entirely. Here’s what happens inside the body when mixing fentanyl with cocaine: A Deadly Coke Cocktail And when these two forces collide? The nervous system has no idea what to do. One minute, the heart is sprinting; the next, it is barely beating. There is no discernable margin for error. And if fentanyl has been added in an amount even slightly higher than expected, the user may not get a second chance. What About Accidental Speedball? Most people who use cocaine aren’t looking for fentanyl. And yet, fentanyl is showing up in cocaine, meth, and even counterfeit prescription pills. Why? Because fentanyl is cheap, it’s powerful, and for dealers, it’s an easy way to make low-quality product feel like high-quality product. The effects, however, can be catastrophic. Fentanyl-laced cocaine can cause: Why Do Dealers Mix Fentanyl with Cocaine? To understand this, we have to think like a business owner and a behavioral psychologist at the same time. Drug dealers are not in the business of making people safe—they are in the business of keeping customers. Adding fentanyl to cocaine creates a more intense high. It makes users crave more, chase the next hit, come back. This is not an accident. This is strategy. And yet, it’s also sloppy. Because fentanyl is so potent, even a small miscalculation in cutting the supply can result in unintentional overdoses. A dealer looking to stretch their inventory can end up with dead customers instead of repeat ones. Can You Recover from Fentanyl and Cocaine Addiction? Yes. We see it every day. And it’s not just about waking up and deciding to be a better person and have more willpower. Addiction may start with bad choices, but once the disease has settled in, it’s about hijacked neurochemistry. Recovery, real recovery, happens when: Getting Addiction Treatment in Palos Verdes, CA If you’re using cocaine right now, there is no way to guarantee it’s fentanyl-free unless you test it. If you’re struggling, if you’re afraid, if you feel like there’s no way out, there is. If you or someone you love is caught in the grip of fentanyl and cocaine, reach out to Peninsula Health Addiction treatment center in the South Bay area. Not tomorrow. Today. There is help. There is hope. And there are people who understand exactly what you’re going through. Call now: 866-934-8228.